Hugh Bell: Between the Raindrops

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The 1957 photograph of Holiday was, Bell tells us in an interview with Michael Valentine in the limited-edition book Hugh Bell: Between the Raindrops, his favorite among his jazz photographs. “A good photograph has to have a point of view,” he said. “So, when I took the photo, I felt that one interesting aspect of her was: How do I exhibit in the photograph that she was taking drugs? In her facial expressions, the way she handled her body, the way clothes fell off her body . . . Who is she?” No gardenias in the hair, no “Lady Day.” A ciggy, the after affects of booze or some other substance, the scars all too visible. “Sometimes she looked angry,” Bell recounted, “sometimes she looked miserable, sometimes she looked like she was laughing, all in a period of five or six minutes.” She could be all of the above in the final image Bell chose. It has a macabre, unsettling quality that seems to point the way to Holiday’s demise two years later.Bell’s most famous jazz image, and the one reproduced in Blue Notes, is Hot Jazz (above) which toured the world with the Museum of Modern Art’s The Family of Man exhibition. But his extraordinary fashion photographs and images of Spain and the West Indies also make for rich viewing. His evocative color prints of West Indian Carnival parades, taken during the 1990s and 2000, speak to Bell’s own background. Born in St. Lucia in 1927, his long career working forEssence, Esquire, and many other outlets only ended after photography had long been accorded the status of fine art. In proud Hugh Bell’s work, we can easily see why.

Each book signed and numbered by Hugh Bell and Michael Valentine232 page Hardcover Book